Serbian security chief sacked


Zoran Djindjic: Promising action against the old regime

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- New Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic's has sacked Rade Markovic, the state security chief and a key ally of former President Yugoslav Slobodan Milosevic.

The sacking was the first act for an administration which has pledged to investigate the old regime and trace money and other assets that belong to the state.

Djindic, who took office in Yugoslavia's dominant republic of Serbia on Thursday, has also promised to hold Milosevic accountable for past crimes.

"We shall not organise a witch hunt, but we won't let the members of the former regime hold on to the assets they plundered from the people," Djindjic said.

Djindjic's promise came as chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte left Belgrade disappointed after Yugoslav leaders rejected her demand that Milosevic be tried by the Netherlands-based court rather than before domestic tribunals.

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Djindjic wants to see the former strongman tried in Yugoslavia -- if not for his role in four Balkan wars, then on charges of corruption.

His new, 17-member Cabinet has also been sworn in -- in what is effectively the first non-communist Serbian administration since World War II.

He pledged to "bring the country back on the right track" after more than a decade of wars and economic upheaval.

"My government won't lie to you, and we won't steal," Djindjic said. "And this is a solemn pledge."

Djindjic, 48, rose to prominence after he helped engineer the victory of Vojislav Kostunica in last September's federal presidential election.

In the early 1990s, he founded the Democratic Party, a cornerstone of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia alliance that won more than a two-thirds majority in the Serbian parliamentary elections in December.

Support for Karadzic

But despite his pledges of democracy, controversies have blotted his record.

While he led anti-Milosevic demonstrations in 1996 and 1997, Djindjic reportedly held secret talks with Milosevic over power-sharing, a move that led to the breakup of the then-opposition coalition.

In 1994, he travelled to Bosnia to offer Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic support in the face of a NATO ultimatum to stop Serb bombardment of Sarajevo.

Karadzic was later charged with war crimes by the international tribunal in The Hague, and Djindjic focused his energies on toppling Milosevic.

Unlike the scholastic Kostunica, a cautious law professor who appeals to most Serbs, Dindjic's fast-track personality makes him as many friends as enemies.

Born into the family of a Yugoslav army officer in the town of Bosanski Samac, near Bosnia's border with Serbia, Djindjic was raised and educated in Belgrade, where he lives with his wife, Ruzica, a lawyer and their two children, Jovana and Luka.

In the early 1970s, he enrolled in the School of Philosophy at Belgrade University, a hotbed of liberal opposition to the government of Yugoslavia's long-time Communist dictator, Josip Broz Tito.

When Tito moved to purge the faculty, Djindjic -- fresh out of college as the school's youngest-ever graduate -- was hounded by the secret police and was unable to find work.

In 1977, he left to study for a philosophy doctorate in Germany. He returned to the Yugoslav capital 12 years later, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to begin working toward dismantling communism in his own country.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.